Help Diagnose Canister Stove Issue (Under Burn?)

[Kevin L]

I took out my new snow peak lite max stove on the rae lakes loop out if onion valley last week and had very odd behavior out of ut. It worked fine running my usual msr butane canisters for the first two days. I probably boiled 0.5L of water 2-3x each day over that period. At the end of the second day the fire abruptly died down then sputtered out completely after a minute or so. This was consistent with my experience of a canister going empty… BUT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE THAN HALF FULL AFTER THIS AMOUNT OF USAGE!

weird… i disconnect the stove and shook the can (which was not cold/frosty) and it WAS half full, but the stove base where the fuel adjustment valve comes out was BURNING HOT!

scary… was the fire dying out a built in safety mechanism? Was this caused by under burn? It was not particularly windy at all with just the occasional mild-moderate gust and the site was relatively protected in the trees. Luckily i hiked out the next day and had enough cold food to do so safely.

at home i weighed the canister and it had 60% of the fuel left. I test ran the stove on that canister again in my driveway and the same thing happened in the absence if any real wind! Please help me figure out what is going on as i am terrified to use this stove again lest i can’t count on it starting my FIRST night out, or, even worse, it blows up my canister from how hot it gets! Do i get it repaired? Toss it? Technique error? thanks in advance!

 

-Kevin

[Kevin L]

Edited… due to ignorance of how BPL works

[Ken Thompson]

Have you tried another canister of fuel? No sign of blockage, dirt etc in the stove?  I have the same stove.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

If you have the original canister, you might be able to gather some additional data.  Screw the stove onto the canister and slightly crack the valve until you hear a slight hiss.  Slowly unscrew the canister and see when the hissing stops.  This will give you an indication as to how close the schrader valve is to closing.  the BRS-3000 that I have is sensitive to the valve position and several times, I have had to crank it down on the threads to get the stove to work correctly.  It may be that as the stove/canister warms up that the thermal expansion causes that particular valve to close.  And as Ken stated, try a different canister.  my 2 cents

[Kevin L]

I just did the test of running the offending stove (litemax ti) witha new canister for a few minutes. Ran fine. Disconnected and both can and stove were cool.

i did a second test where i ran the offending canister with a different stove (windburner) for several minuates. All went well and all connections were cool.

WHEN I WENT BACK TO PICK UP THE LITEMAX STOVE 3-4 MINUTES LATER THE BASE WHERE MY FINGERS WERE TOUCHING IN THE PHITO WAS BURNING HOT!!!

it is heat sinking from the burner head down the stem to the base if you run it for long enough. I think this is a problem with the stove.

[Bruce Tolley]

@Kevin
I am not following how it is that when you removed the Litemax it was cool but when you came back 3 minutes later it was hot. Which part of the stove were you touching that was cool the first time around.

I bought a Litemax years ago when they first came out. The threads are titanium not brass so sometimes I have issues getting the stove screwed down sufficiently on a canister.  Could this be part of your issue? If so, this could point at Jon Fong’s theory of the mode of failure above.

[Jerry Adams]

I’ve had a canister that didn’t work well with a particular stove.  I forget the combination.  That brand of stove may have a slightly shorter length of the pin or the canister slightly longer distance to the valve.  Maybe use a different brand of canister with that stove.

Try screwing the stove down harder, but not so much you strip the threads.

It’s normal for that part where your hand is on to be hot.  Takes several minutes to cool down.  Make sure the canister is not hot, on the side, opposite where the fuel is inside.

[David Thomas]

I posted recently about a fake BRS-3000T off of eBay that did the same thing. It works for a single 0.5 liter boil, but longer burn time conduct enough heat to (my theory) expand the brass and aluminum different amounts to a point that the valve doesn’t pass any fuel, even when fully open.

When the stove cools, it works again. For a while. Until it heats up.

I’ve never seen this in real BRS-3000T’s. And the fake is an obviously different design and build.

[Bruce Tolley]

Does anyone know if there are counterfeit Litemax’s out there???

[Kevin L]

@jon i didn’t have time to do that test earlier, but as i imagine doing it i’m not even sure what i would adjust if i did

@bruce the part i am touching in the photo was slightly warm when i disconnected it but the burning hot burner (duh!) has enough heat that it conducts down to the part i am touching over several minutes to the point i cannot stand to touch it because it is so hot

@jerry i am willing to try a differentbrand canister or screwing slightly tighter onto the canister if i have good reason to think it will operate normally, but i have had several upright canister stoves in the past and am not sure how hot Is “normal) for the base to get. I get tgat the canister around the fuel is most important to keep cool, but i am NOT comfortable with how hot this stove is getting… i would toss it before accepting it as it is

@david interesting find and i jive with your thinking… i’ll have to look back where i got this but i know it was BNIB and from a real, known online vendor of outdoor goods

[Kevin L]

@jerry and @bruce i just did two more tests where i screwed the stove down as tight as i dare and it still heated the stove base to the point of blistering skin hot if not released instantly and still painfully hot to touch several minutes after shutting off. I also tried jetboik brand canister and surprisingly it got notably LESS hot than all the msr canisters, but still too hot to comfortably touch the base of the stove and hotter than i am comfortable with… neither test did i let it run until the stove died. I stopoed once the base of the stove became burning hot.

[Jerry Adams]

Maybe something wrong with that stove.  Are there happy lite max users that haven’t had this problem.

I trust your judgement about base getting hot.  I’ll have to try that with my stove.

[Ken Thompson]

What pot are you using? Heat exchanger or standard?

[Kevin L]

@ken in the field i used the tall, skinny, non heat exchanging snowpeak mini solo set (0.9L, titanium). In my driveway i used no pot

[Ken Thompson]

Get it exchanged. I’ve got the same stove and have experience with others and have never had this issue. You running it full blast?

[Kevin L]

@ken i will try… forgot where i got it (6 mos ago or more… but never did more than test fire it until now). Never ran the flames higher than the circumference of the pot

[Gary Dunckel]

Have you tried your stove with a canister fuel brand besides the MSR? I have found that several of my stoves and lanterns don’t function as well with that brand, but they do just fine with the MSR brand stoves. Why don’t you try your stove with the canisters made by Snow Peak, Jetboil, or Olicamp – these all seem to be less goofy than the MSR canisters. I think it has to to do with the length of the stove’s pin, or the depth of the MSR canister’s Lindel valve thingy.

[Ken Thompson]

Go to the source. They certainly don’t want you having something potentially dangerous and at least makes you uncomfortable using.

https://snowpeak.com/pages/warranty

[Kevin L]

@gary it seemed marginally better with jetboil canister, but not better enough

@ken huzzah! After thorough search i got it from rei with an online order that for some reason didn’t attach to my co-op account. This shoukd be a slam dunk return, or else i will contact snowpeak directly. Thanks!

[Roger Caffin]

What a fascinating problem.
First of all, I would say the stove is defective and should be returned. That is abnormal behaviour. I don’t think I have ever experienced that problem myself.

Possible causes???
If the control valve is a bit dirty it might not be shutting off 100%. Assuming the stove was still attached to the canister, a slow gas leak could lead to a flame at the jet inside the burner column. This would certainly make the base extremely hot. I have seen this problem once, with a Chinese copy of the MSR Windpro.

If the stove was not attached to the canister, it is a bit hard to see how the base got that hot. To be sure, the burner head gets very ho, but it has low thermal mass. My experience has been that the burner head cools very quickly.

Why the stove stopped working in the field – that could indicate a blocked jet.

Cheers

[David Thomas]

“the burner head gets very ho”

[Kevin L]

I was on a group trip last week where i brought my excellent windburner stove, but today i got around to exchanging the defective stove at rei. I figured it was a fluke, so went for a straight exchange, which was easy as expected.

 

I tested the new stove out running it for 5-10 minutes a few times. Thankfully no fuel shutoff like the defective stove running at medium to medium high blast in my driveway with no pot. However, this new unit runs really hot at the metal base with the adjustment valve as well. I posted a few pics measuring different areas with a thermometer gun to get your thoughts…

 

I have full faith in the accuracy of the readings in the first, second and fourth pictures, but i think the third picture, reading 128 on the top of the canister, is a little high because the laser beam angled through some of the exhausted heat under the burner. I know the area where the fuel is located at the bottom if the canister is fine. But most alarming is that the direct attachment to the canister reaches 190 degrees! This would absolutely blister your fingers if grabbed and held for any length of time. And the silver colored ring at the top of the actual canister gets almost uncomfortably warm to touch… thoughts?

 

[Hikin’ Jim]

Kevin,

I think it’s fine (the replacement stove).  Don’t worry about the temperature of the stove; worry about the temperature of the canister.  If the main body of the canister is at 77 F after an extended burn, you’ve got no problem.  That’s a little worrisome that the top portion of the canister got to 128 F (they’re rated to 50 C which is 122 F), but as you say that reading may not be reliable.  If the areas of the canister below the fuel line (usually indicated by frost or condensation on the outside of the canister) is staying reasonably cool, then I think it’s fine although I’d keep an eye on it.  You should be able place your hand on the sides of the canister and leave them there without heat induced discomfort.  If at any time it feels very hot, you should shut off the stove.

As for the differences in canisters, they’re pretty minimal except for Coleman.  All of the major brands of canister in the US are made in S. Korea except Coleman (which is made in France).  The majority of those canisters are produced by just one company:  Taeyang Industrial Co, Ltd.  Even canisters made in S. Korea not made by Taeyang are all extremely similar in terms of the positioning of the valve within the threaded connector.   All of the canister manufacturers in S. Korea meet in an industry association that sets mutually agreed upon standards.  The brands are highly interchangeable in terms of the valve and connector.

The contents of the canister vary by brand, but that really only matters in cold weather.  There may be more sampling and quality control in some brands as compared to others; that is a detail about which I don’t have any insight.

HJ

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Kevin

When we were measuring the temperature of one of my stoves during operation with an expensive pro-grade IR scanner, I found I could get some really ‘wrong’ results. I could get almost room temperature for parts which I could not touch, and I could get temps >100 C for parts which were only warm.

The cause was due to the way an IR temperature scanner works. It compares the intensity of the radiation at 2 or more different wavelengths. Assuming you have what we call a ‘black body’ as the radiating object, this works well: the radiation spectrum follows Planck’s law.

However, shiny things like machined aluminium and glossy painted canisters do NOT follow Planck’s law, and you have to correct the instrument for this. With pro-grade instruments this is possible (to a greater or lesser degree), but if you have a simple consumer-grade unit this correction may not be possible.

Equally, if there is (IR) reflection off the surface, the instrument does not know what it is measuring. You will notice that the reading from the bottom of the canister is 77 F. This may well be close, as the surface there is not in the line of sight of the flames. But as you go higher on the canister the temperature seems to rise in an unbelievable manner – and the surface starts to be able to reflect IR from the flames.

In short, I am not convinced that your temperature readings mean anything at all. You will need to use a contact thermometer instead. At the very least, check the surface temps with your hand (CARE!). If you can touch the surface, it is below 40 C. This is my ‘touch test’.

Cheers

[Kevin L]

@jim thanks so much for weighing in. I really appreciate your work.

@roger i suppose you are probably right about measuring temps at different spots accurately, but from a touch test i can confirm this:

-first pic reading 77 F and second pic reading 92 F were only very slightly warm

-third pic reading 128 F did NOT feel 36-51 degrees F warmer than the previous areas and was still comfortably warm to the touch

-fourth pic reading 190 F was instant and intense/damaging pain to the touch

[Author]

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